she says, handing me a piece of black silk string held together with an old silver clasp.
I take the bracelet gingerly.
“Is this going to hurt?”
“No,” Hayes says reassuringly. “Not this one.”
This time I refrain from asking what she means. Instead, I snap the bracelet onto my wrist. Obviously, this is going to cause something very strange to happen. But if they could do that to my hair… well. Okay.
This spell, though, is not as instantaneous. Nothing seems to happen.
“Is it working?” I ask after a few minutes.
“Give it some time,” Madison says. She walks to the bar and turns on some jazz music. Hayes sits on a stool, texting someone—Jason, no doubt. To distract myself, I start leafing through a copy of Vogue.
“Man, I hate these magazines,” I say. “Like, I’m seriously going to ride a Ferris wheel in a Prada bikini? I mean, this girl is scuba diving in a silk—”
My thought is interrupted by rabid, uncontrollable hunger.
“Hey, Madison, do you have anything to eat?”
“Sure,” she says, pulling out a plate of brownies.
“Something healthy?” I ask. “You just told me I was fat. Remember?”
“You’ve got your talis on. As long as you wear that, you’ll never have to worry about what you’re eating.”
“My what?” I say, barely able to concentrate. Okay, I don’t care if the brownie will make me fatter. I’m ravenous! What is wrong with me? I put one into my mouth.
“Your talis,” Hayes says helpfully. “Your hoodoo bracelet.”
“Hang on.” I stuff in two more brownies. The hunger subsides, but only a tiny bit. “Okay,” I say, swallowing. “What the hell do you mean?”
“When you were at Sam’s, did you see birdcages?”
“Sure,” I say. “Well, not cages. It’s more like an aviary. I figured he kept the birds because their waste fertilized the flowers.”
“That’s one of the reasons,” Hayes says. “There’s also one bird for every Magnolia.”
“One bird for every Magnolia?”
“Oh my God—yours has got to be a parrot,” Madison says.
“Yeah? Well yours is a nasty—”
“Girls,” Hayes interrupts sternly. “Pull it together. We’re working here.”
“The bird burns your food,” Madison says. “Get it?”
“No.”
“The expression eat like a bird is actually totally misleading,” Hayes explains. “Our bird mates are hummingbirds—they eat at least three times their body weight a day. The specimens connected to us by our talises burn our food for us. Doc Buzzard figured out a way to conjure their metabolisms into our bodies.”
“Trippy.” I finger my new bracelet.
“Totally. That’s why we’re so skinny, even though we eat everything in sight.”
I nod. It all makes sense now—the buckets of chicken, the tubs of ice cream. And here I thought it was just a regular bout of teen bulimia. Just then I’m hit with another hunger pang.
“Will I always be this ravenous?”
“You’ll get used to it. The good news is, you’re going to get a lot thinner, fast. In fact, you’ll drop five pounds today if you don’t take in more than three thousand calories.”
“It’s kind of a pain sometimes,” Hayes admits. “It gets hard to remember to eat.”
“That I find hard to believe,” I say, sneaking another brownie.
“Listen, let’s quit for the day and go see Damien,” Hayes says, kindly squeezing my shoulder.
“I told you guys—I’m done with shopping.”
“Come on, Alex,” Madison says. “It’s Halloween. Lighten up! Anyway, trust me—you’ll thank me. In a couple of days, you’re going to need all new clothes.”
24
Well, it works. Hoodoo, voodoo, fire-ant hair spells, whatever. You know what? I don’t care, really. The point is, I am finally somewhat close to hot.
Over the next couple of weeks, my appearance is totally transformed. After years of worrying about my extra pounds, I’m now inarguably skinny—as skinny as I’ve always wanted to be. My zits are gone, thanks to some weird yellow paste that burned like acid when Hayes rubbed it onto my face, and my hair has kept its newfound gloss.
As awesome as this transformation is, though, the changes are getting me into some embarrassing situations. For one thing, my scalp still itches. In fact, I’ve been scratching so much that Constance takes me aside one morning and asks discreetly whether I need to be tested for lice. And Madison was right about the clothes. After just a couple of days, nothing fits me. My shirts are looser, and my pants gap at the waist. The jeans we got Tuesday at BleuBelle’s are already huge, so I have to hitch them up all day. Then, at my locker, Dex informs me that I’m giving the entire hallway a killer view